


My Brother’s Keeper

by mistrali



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Revenge, Risen Crowley
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26767537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistrali/pseuds/mistrali
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15





	My Brother’s Keeper

Before Crowley was Kokabiel, before he’d even had a name, he’d been stardust and the spaces between nebulae; he’d been the force behind the birth of countless stars; all potentiality, matter waiting to be created, a seed of mischief and mayhem.

Rising wasn’t like that. Rising was a trumpet-blast, a dawn more terrible and fearful than any sunrise on any planet through all of time.

Under the light of Heaven his human body, the body he’d loved so much, disintegrated like a moth under a lightbulb. But bodies were as nothing against the violence of the music and the light that assailed… assailed who?

Who am I? he thought into the waiting void, with his last wisp of conscious thought.

And, faintly, he heard an answer.

_Crowley!_

*******

Aziraphale stared at the detritus of the chalk hillside they’d been sitting on. Out of the blaze where Crowley had been stepped a newly formed angel. The skin was a human colour: pale golden, with a tint of red in the cheeks; the nose was snub. But transparent eyes stared out from the eyelids, above the head shone an orange halo, and the pair of fledgling, undulating wings that folded over their back, on every plane, were see-through and spattered with light-specks, like sheets of mica.

“Crowley?” whispered Aziraphale, horror-stricken; and even as the name slipped out he knew it was wrong. This being was no more Crowley than he himself was. The slender profile and, curiously, a golden signet ring on the right index finger, were all that remained of the demon he’d loved so well.

“ _My name is Kokabiel_ ,” said the angel. “ _Who are you?_ ” Had Aziraphale been human, he would have gone to his knees or run screaming from that voice. It was a crisp cold sound, with none of Crowley’s sibilance: the sort of voice that said _Be not afraid, for the stars shine down upon you._ It was brilliant and clear as a bell, and it pierced Aziraphale to the heart.

“We’ve been friends for millennia, my dear.”

There was no hint of recognition in those eyes. Unbidden, fury rising in him like floodwater, Aziraphale thought of Abel, lying peaceful and sightless on the grass but for his caved-in skull, the gouts of his lifeblood long since gone to nourish the barley. _"I do not know: am I my brother's keeper?"_

Six thousand years of history, of memory, severed in a beam of light. Heaven too clean for blood, were they? Not if Aziraphale could help it. He would bring the blood to their doorstep, the worms, maggots and the soil, all of the ugly earthly slaughter they’d walled out. “No more messin’ about,” Adam had said. Aziraphale heartily concurred: no more messing about, from Above or Below. If they had to learn peace through the language of the sword, then so be it; Heaven should have outgrown bloodshed long ago, but under its veneer of righteousness it was a well-oiled, soulless killing machine.

But first, he had a demon to recover.


End file.
